The present invention relates to an information processor and in particular to a device for playback of recorded information.
The background art in the technical filed includes the JPA-No. 169250/2001 (patent document 1) as an example. This publication mentions to provide a mobile display system as the problem, which implements transferring image information from a large-capacity video server to a small-capacity mobile terminal by subdividing them, to automate complicated setting operations involving transferring at each time, and to transfer image information with a simple operation. The publication discloses a technique that manages how far the image is viewed with the terminal as an audiovisual address (ST10), in transferring the image information from the video server, determines the image to be viewed next from the audiovisual address (ST16 to ST20), and automatically transfers the image to be viewed next based on this audiovisual address (ST22 to ST26).
The MPEG video compression technology has been used in various types of devices, which digitizes image information to record them in a storage medium by means of the compression coding theory, and transfers it through communication media. There are some applied examples, such as a DVD & hard disk read/write drive using the MPEG-2 Video standard (ISO/IEC 13818-2), and a communication system between mobile terminals using the MPEG-4 Video standard (ISO/IEC 14496-2).
The recording duration becomes some hours to some hundred hours when recording image information in a HDD or a DVD; and it has become several hours when recording them in a memory IC used in a mobile phone or a mobile terminal. This extension of the recording duration has realized that a user records the recently launched digital broadcasting programs and so forth in a HDD or a DVD over a long period, duplicates them in a memory IC for the mobile terminal, and thereby views the images already recorded in the user's home while being out. And in the case of a mobile phone having the communication function, the user is able to receive and enjoy video/audio contents from the delivery server thereof by way of the network.
To view the video/audio contents by using a mobile phone or a mobile terminal will involve the necessity of the video/audio contents transferred from another device having the recording medium of a larger capacity than the storage capacities of these devices; and this transfer operation is very troublesome to the user. When the user has lots of prolonged period programs or program groups recorded in the hard disk at home, and transfers them to the mobile phone to view them in a moving transportation, if all the program contents cannot be transferred to the memory contained in the mobile phone, the user will have to transfer the data each time when coming back home. In this case, the HDD recorder does not possess the information as to how far the user has viewed the program contents recorded in the hard disk while being out, which requires the user to carry out the following operations: setting a permissible editing point to the end of the part that the user has viewed, and retransferring the part following thereafter, which the user has not yet viewed, to the memory in the mobile phone. Further, if the user has not yet viewed part of the program contents that the user had first transferred to the mobile phone, the user has to perform the following operations: erasing the other parts except that part on the side of the mobile phone, and recording the contents in the memory so as to follow thereafter, which the user edited with the HDD recorder in the same manner as the above operations.
In view of these circumstances, the conventional technique discloses a system that implements ‘in transferring image information from a large-capacity video server to a small-capacity mobile terminal by subdividing them, to automate complicated setting operations involving transferring at each time, and to transfer image information with a simple operation’.
However, the conventional technique did not sufficiently consider the usability in the point of shortening the user's operation time when transferring the video data to the mobile device. For example, the conventional technique did disclose only the transfer of a piece of image information, and did not consider the usability when the user wishes to view plural image information pieces (segments) continuously (e.g., to view the program broadcast every week continuously). And in transferring the data, the conventional technique did not consider what types of user interfaces should be provided to enhance the usability.